In order to improve a peak rate and also an experience of a user, a node 1 (e.g., a terminal or a base station) usually receives data transmitted by a node 2 (e.g., a base station or a terminal) over one or more carrier waves or progresses. Correspondingly, the node 1 feeds back hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) information to the node 2. The node 1 detects whether a transmission block on every carrier wave/progress is correct or not (a receiving status). If the detection result is correct, then an acknowledgement (ACK) is fed back; otherwise, a negative acknowledgement (NACK) is fed back.
In a long time evolution (LTE) system of a third generation partnership project (3GPP), a terminal (node 1) needs to feed back the HARQ information according to the number of carrier wave(s) configured on a base station (node 2) and a transmission mode of each of the carrier wave(s). When the transmission mode of the carrier wave is a spatial multiplexing mode, e.g., every carrier wave has 2 transmission blocks, each of the carrier wave(s) needs to feed back 2 bits of HARQ information; otherwise, each of the carrier wave(s) needs to feed back 1 bit of HARQ information (every carrier wave has 1 transmission block). For example, assuming that the network provides the terminal with 5 carrier waves and the transmission mode of each of the carrier waves is in the spatial multiplexing mode, then the terminal needs to feed back 10 bits of HARQ information to the network over one uplink sub-frame.
In addition, when the carrier wave mentioned above is in a time division duplexing (TDD) mode, the terminal is further required to feed back HARQ information according to uplink and downlink configurations of this carrier wave. For example, assuming that the network provides the terminal with one TDD carrier wave and that both of the uplink and downlink configurations of the carrier wave have a configuration index 5, then the terminal needs to feedback HARQ information of 9 downlink sub-frames (one transmission block for every sub-frame, totally 9 bits) over one uplink sub-frame. For another example, assuming that the network provides the terminal with 2 TDD carrier waves and that both of the uplink and downlink configurations of the carrier wave have a configuration index 5, then the terminal needs to feedback HARQ information of 18 downlink sub-frames (18 bits) over one uplink sub-frame. However, in 3GPP carrier aggregation enhancement researching programs of related technologies, the node 2 may provide the node 1 with as many as 32 carrier waves; for frequency division duplexing (FDD), it's required to feed back 32 bits of HARQ information in case of non-spatial multiplexing mode, and it's required to feed back 64 bits of HARQ information in case of spatial multiplexing mode; for TDD, the number of bits of the HARQ information required to be fed back is related to the uplink and downlink configuration information. If the number of the uplink and downlink configurations are both 5, then the number of bits of the HARQ information is as many as 288.
In related technologies, for purpose of saving a control signaling overhead and a power consumption, improving a coverage, reducing an implementation complexity and the like, the node 1 usually needs to reduce the number of bits of the HARQ information which is fed back to the node 2. In this regard, it usually adopts a solution of binding the HARQ information of a plurality of transmission blocks in a same, predefined time domain or spatial domain; for example, binding the HARQ information of two transmission blocks in a time domain or a spatial domain of a same carrier wave; if both of the two transmission blocks are detected as being correct, then feeding back 1 bit of ACK; otherwise, feeding back 1 bit of NACK. With such a solution, the overhead of HARQ feedback may be reduced by one half.
However, the related technologies as mentioned above involve several problems. If only one of the above-mentioned, bound transmission blocks is incorrectly received, then it has to retransmit the bound transmission blocks, to be doubly sure, because the node 2 cannot determine which one of the transmission blocks is erroneous according to the HARQ information fed back by the node 1. Such waste of transmission resources may negatively affect a throughput of the downlink system. In addition, an information channel experienced by the bound transmission blocks is required to have relatively stronger correlation, but information channels on different carrier waves usually are independent from each other. In the above-mentioned solution, when the node 2 transmits data to the node 1 over a plurality of carrier waves, if it still adopts the method of binding transmission blocks and binds the HARQ information of a plurality of transmission blocks on a plurality of carrier waves, then the negative effects to the throughput of the system will be further increased.